


Mirror Image

by TiamatsChild



Category: The Sandman, Vingt mille lieues sous les mers | Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea - Jules Verne
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-07
Updated: 2012-01-07
Packaged: 2017-10-29 02:21:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 250
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/314777
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TiamatsChild/pseuds/TiamatsChild
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nemo is all too well acquainted with the Lady Despair.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mirror Image

There is a man in this mirror.

He works industriously, he loves deeply, he is always engaged with something productive or beautiful, or, more commonly, both, but he is still in the mirror.

He has a guest, a quiet, curious man, who has never caught any part of himself on any mirror. He does not know why he has kept this guest, but he knows that when this guest looks up from sea-weed tea and smiles a gentle, wry little twist of a smile at some almost lighthearted observation, the Lady’s hook digs deep into his heart, and tugs, twisting, tearing, laying open layers and structures of shockingly delicate muscle (ask the guest what the names are – he knows them all).

He is in the mirror. He is always in the mirror.

He works and works and works and lashes out in anger, throwing flashes of polar cold at anyone with the misfortune to be near him, and still he is in the mirror. He tears open ships, spilling them across the water in revenge, and still he is in the mirror. He examines all his interesting and rare specimens, and even tries to see them through the eyes of his guest, to whom all is new and sweet, and still he is in the mirror.

The Lady has bound him with glass, hemmed him so that even in the deep, dark silent freedom of his sea he cannot leave her.

Her hook leads him, and he follows freely, willingly.


End file.
